Taiwan Church News

3321 Edition

October 19 - 25, 2015

Church Ministry

Let Aboriginal Youth Serve Cultural Substitute Service For Their People

Reported by Lin Yi-yin

If the enterprises are allowed to apply for industrial or R&D substitute service, which is an alternative civilian servicein Taiwan instead of the traditional military recruitment, why the aboriginal tribes could not keep their aboriginal youth to serve cultural substitute services in order to preserve the endangered aboriginal languages and cultures?

To demonstrate the conundrum of the aboriginal society, Mr Mayaw Biho, an urban aboriginal candidate campaigning for the membership of Legislative Yuan, led a group of the aboriginal youth playing a street drama before Ministry of the Interior on 15 October. The government should include a cultural substitute service by amending the laws of Enforcement Statute for Substitute Service and Enforcement Rules of the Implementation Act of Substitute Service, said Mayaw Biho.

The aboriginal people accounts for 2.3% of total population of Taiwan, though, her ratio is over 7% in voluntary military service and exceeding 60% in special services. Contrasting with the decline of the aboriginal society, be it the exodus of young population or the dying of the aboriginal cultures and languages, maintaining a high ratio of aboriginal youth investing in military human resources has to be halted right away via amending the existing laws of substitute service , stressed Mayaw Biho.

Translated by Peter Wolfe